In its new campaign to offset an ongoing personnel crisis, the Swedish Police emphasized the importance of having police officers with a “mixed background.”
On November 7, the Swedish police will hold an information meeting in Rinkeby, one of Sweden’s most notorious ghettos, as part of a recruitment campaign to get more immigrants to become police officers.
It is important that more people seek police training and that the applicants and future policemen have a mixed background, said Niclas Andersson, the head of Rinkeby Police. His station covers a number of districts, including Rinkeby, Tensta, Akalla, Kista and Spånga, all migrant-heavy areas with high unemployment which have been plagued by rampant crime.
“We need diversity within the police,” Andersson said in the press release. “Should we succeed in our mission, we must reflect society. I hope more people will be interested in seeking a fun and challenging job,” Niclas Andersson said, urging the locals to cooperate with the law.
Long riddled with problems involving financing and personnel drain, the understaffed Swedish Police intends to boost its numbers to 40,000 by 2024, up from approximately 30,000 today. According to Andersson, this will be done primarily through enhanced training routines. This year alone, 1,000 extra training spots have been arranged.
Rinkeby is part of Greater Stockholm. At over 15,000 inhabitants, Rinkeby is noted for its high concentration of first- and second-generation immigrants and their descendants; over 90 percent of its population has a foreign background. As people of African descent constitute close to half of Rinkeby’s population, with the Somali diaspora being particularly prominent, Rinkeby has been often referred to as “Little Mogadishu,” which is something even Sweden’s now-defunct official twitter account had no qualms mentioning.
In 2015, Rinkeby was placed on the ever-expanding police list of “extremely vulnerable” areas in terms of crime, urban blight and unemployment. In 2017, prosecutor Lise Tamm described Rinkeby as “almost a warzone.”
Earlier this month, Swedish authorities held an emergency meeting over a wave of gang-related shootings in the country’s largest cities, including the metropolitan area. While overall crime in Sweden remains fairly moderate compared with international standards, the Scandinavian country saw a record 43 people killed in shootings in 2017.
